Oral anticoagulation therapy is necessary if a patient has an artificial heart valve, or if they are affected by atrial fibrillation or thrombotic diseases. For patients receiving oral anticoagulation therapy with warfarin, it is important that the dosage is exactly right. The patient's level of coagulation requires regular monitoring, as patients react differently to warfarin, and several factors may interfere with the drugs such as food and other medications. The International Normalized Ratio (INR) is a standardized method of measuring the rate at which blood coagulates. It is very important that patients stay within their target INR range. If a patient's INR is too low, the risk of blood clots increases. If a patient's INR is too high, the risk of internal bleeding increases.
Properly trained patients and/or caregivers are capable of performing reliable INR testing using the patient self-testing model. Handheld blood clot testing meters have enabled patients to implement self-testing. For these patients, self-testing is cost effective and leads to outcomes at least as good as standard INR testing in a specialized clinic. Handheld blood clot testing meters are a sub-category of handheld medical test devices. Other handheld medical test devices are known, like handheld blood glucose meters, lipid testing meters or cardiac marker testing meters.
Despite the success of self-testing, it remains inconvenient for healthcare providers to retrieve test results from the meters used by patients to self-test. An innovative solution is required to address the growing demand from patients for wireless connectivity. Thus, there is a need for means to seamlessly transfer INR or other test results from a handheld medical device wirelessly locally to a communication hub and/or remotely to a server associated with a healthcare provider.
This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.